The
working group included participants from different history institutions
worldwide[1]
and formed, thanks to the support of the NCPH, the first nucleus of
participants that would have lead to the creation of an international
association for public history between 2010 and 2011 to exchange ideas on what
to teach in PH programs worldwide, discuss possible student exchange and
international internships programs, facilitate publications on transnational
issues in public history, and, in general, put the International Federation for Public History
(IFPH) - Fédération Internationale pour
l’Histoire Publique (FIHP) -the bilingual name of the new Federation-imprimaturs
on seminars, workshops, conferences, symposia, and other events worldwide such
as the international conference that will be held in Amsterdam at the end of
2014.

First
Portland,[2] then
Pensacola after over a year of preparatory work, set the basis for the birth of a provisional International Federation for Public History in August 2010 with a
provisional Steering Committee coordinated by Anna Adamek.[3] Bylaws
in French and in English were drafted[4]
after the NCPH Pensacola annual meetingin
2011 and a nominating committee was elected in West Florida, to facilitate the
presentation of candidatures and theelection of an
IFPH-FIHP steering committee. This election took place in January 2012. The
elected Steering Committee of the IFPH-FIHP met twice already in 2012.

A year after Portland, during the
Pensacola NCPH annual meeting in
2011,
I had the chance to organize a session called European Approaches to Public History: Identifying Common Needs and
Practices.[5] An attempt was made to look at
the origin ofPublic History practices
-“without the name” - also in continental European countries.[6]
The session in Pensacola showed that, unlike in the Anglo-Saxon world where the discipline was
now established,[7]
a variety of Public History
discourses and activities emerged in continental Europe where the English term
and concept were barely used nor translated. “Public History: a Ghost Discipline?” was the title of my essay which focused on the contemporary
cultural and political debates in continental Europe and Ireland and showed
that they were heavily influenced by history and memory issues. The essay
pointed out that professional historians actively participated in public
debates in the media and that history was celebrated in public places. At the same
time, a dense network of cultural heritage institutions and media also helped
to question the role of history and memory within the public sphere. So the Public
History field in Europe is linked to collective identities at different levels:
from local memories to the construction of regional, national and pan-European
“Heimaten” and “Realms of Memory”. Historical places, monuments, landscapes,
have their own local, regional and national meanings. Their surrounding communities
are looking for who is able to interpret them. Thus, Europeans –but this is
true also in other continents- are inventing multi-dimensional identities and
traditions that are based upon Public History activities.

Today, some Public History and
Applied History Teaching Programs and activities are available in continental European
universities but it was clear that very few times “applied historians” or
“public historians” were performing public history in a conscious way or following
the best practices of an official academic discipline or a history sub-field called
“Public History”.

The IFPH role is to understand
and to analyze how the past is integrated in the Public Sphere worldwide and
which institutions, media and actors are involved in PH practices. In this
sense, the creation of an international association such as the IFPH, could
play a new role in connecting people, creating networks and supporting PH
activities in different continents.

2012
Luxembourg and Milwaukee IFPH-FIHP Meetings

IFPH-FIHP Steering Committee meeting, Luxembourg, March 2012

The founding IFPH meeting
was held in Luxembourg city, in the Neumünster Abbey, the 21-22 of March of
2012. Thanks to the Virtual Center for
the Knowledge of Europe, the CVCE (Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance
de l’Europe) it has been possible to organize such a meeting in
Europe and a first public presentation of the Federation on the 21st
of March together with an IFPH restricted SC meeting on the 22nd.[8] The IFPH Luxembourg
meeting was organized together with digital history activities during the CVCE 2nd
Digital Humanities Symposium[9]. As a member of the
expert committee of the CVCE myself -and also as a member of the program
committee of the CVCE Symposium- I successfully proposed to the organizers to
include a session on
"Digital Public History" to the DH symposium program to allow
for a public presence of the IFPH during the scientific activities of the
Symposium.

The discussion of the Steering Committee
in Luxembourg focused on the IFPH Goals and Activities, its Membership and Finances: four essential chapters of its activities.

During the Luxembourg meeting, it was proposed to
change the timing for the rotation of the at large delegates, postponing all elections from 2011 to 2012.
This proposal was accepted during the Second IFPH meeting in Milwaukee.[10] So the first IFPH SC partial election will take place in December 2013.
Andreas Etges and Anna Adamek agreed that Anna Adamek who started the early process
of internationalization within the NCPH, will become the first at large
delegate to leave the SC at the end of 2013.

Membership

Until now, to become a member of the IFPH it was sufficient to express one's interest in the field and in the federation sending
an email to the Chair of the IFPH. In Luxembourg, it was decided to ask for a first annual IFPH Membership fee to all members. The membership will be
renewed in January each year. The second annual IFPH fee will be collected
before the end of January 2014. To allow for a better an easy diffusion of the
federation membership, the SC members decided that the 2012-2013 fee was as follow:10 USD for students, 30 USD for professionals, 100 USD for founding members. The value was thought in dollars because the IFPH
Treasurer, Michael Devine offered to open a bank account for the IFPH under the
law of the State of Missouri in the USA. At the moment, this solution is no
longer viable and the idea has been abandoned. An IFPH budget
will only be created officially when an IFPH bank account will be settled. Because
of the urgency of the matter and to avoid to deal with more complicated and
expensive issues, the IFPH decided to rely on the NCPH long experience and
organization for collecting its own money. So the IFPH will use the
NCPH channels for collecting its first membership fee for 2012-2013 in Autumn
2012 and all members will be informed as soon as this possibility will be set
up.[11]This situation should change before 2014, when the new organization will
have chosen the best country and legal system to register the federation as a
non-profit international organization.

Another membership issue discussed in Luxembourg was if the IFPH should
include only individual members or accept also associations and institutional
members The Steering Committee
thought it was important to accept and to promote Institutional Membership
within the IFPH. It was noted that the organization's by-laws provides for such
a category.
So, for example, the SISF, the Italian
Society for the Study of Photography,[12]
an interdisciplinary association interested in photography as a public cultural
media, was thefirst international association to become an official member of
the IFPH already in April 2012.

Ottawa,
Amsterdam, Jinan: International Conferences

But if the Federation
has not yet established a proper budget, its SC worked to foster Public History
issues and the IFPH-FIHP presence worldwide through international conferences
and conference organization.

TheApril2013 NCPH Ottawa annual meeting will give a chance to present IFPH oriented
Public History panels and round tables provided they will be selected. During
the IFPH public meeting in Milwaukee in April, Jean-Pierre
Morin (IFPH Vice-Chair), public historian working for
the Treaty
Relations Directorate, Indian and Northern Affairs in theAboriginal
Affairs and Northern Development Canada,[13] introduced
the NCPH Ottawa conference and the role that the IFPH could have played in this
occasion. Morin was following the NCPH’s wish to internationalize the contents
of its annual meeting and activities and, for rhe third time ever, the NCPH moved to Canada and organised its annual meeting outside the USA together with the IFPH-FIHP. So, IFPH members
and the IFPH SC will promote international initiatives for Ottawa. In
Milwaukee, Morin stressed also the importance of comparing PH programs
worldwide and memory studies programs. To support the internationalization of the
NCPH Ottawa annual meeting, local organizers will try to fund some travel and
residence costs for participants coming from other continents. The IFPH-FIHP will also call for a first worldwide general membership
assembly of the Federation in Ottawa.

Also during the Luxembourg meeting,
a 2014 European conference of the IFPH was planned. The broader argument of the
conference would have repeated the topic of the IFPH panel during the Luxembourg
2nd Digital Humanities Symposium: Digital Public History. In June 2012, the
IFPH made an agreement with the University
of Amsterdam Public History program and the
NIOD, the Institute
for War, Holocaust and Genocide studies, to
organize this conference in Amsterdam during the second half of 2014. The whole IFPH 2014 PH Conference
Team will meet in
Amsterdam before the end of 2012.[14]

The IFPH obtained the recognition of the
Public History field thanks to the activities of Arnita Jones, for many years
executive director of the American
Historical Association and today secretary of the IFPH, when the federation
was recognized as a new Internal
Commissionof the International Committee of the Historical Sciences, the ICHS-CISH, after the Amsterdam
meeting of the ICHS in August 2010.[15]

So the IFPH -bilingual like the
International Committee- answered to the call for papers for the next ICHS
meeting -ICHS meetings are held every five years- in 2015
in Jinan, China. The deadline was in January 2012.[16] Unfortunately, none of the five proposals presented were
selected by the sub-committee in charge of the program for the 22nd
Congress of the ICHS.[17]
The International committee received 209 proposals -including the IFPH
proposals- all sent to the members of the sub-committee of the ICHS who
addressed their comments and suggestions to their Secretary-General, Robert
Frank.[18]
Amended proposals were discussed at a sub-committee meeting[19]
in Neuchâtel,
Switzerland, on 11 and 12 May 2012. The sub-committee
selected proposals -no Public History
panels-, are now submitted to a General Assembly of the ICHS –it happens at
least each three years- to be held in Budapest
(6-8 September 2012). Proposed themes were classified as
follow: 3 or 4 major themes, 30 specialised themes, 19 joint sessions, 21 round
tables and 1 special session.But there is still hope that one of the selected roundtable
-What is Public History? -an IFPH
partnership with the British
National Committee of the ICHS- will be maintained for the Jinan conference after the Budapest meeting of
the ICHS. The presence of the IFPH SC secretary, Arnita Jones, (the Chair and
the Secretary of the IFPH are both allowed to attend the meeting representing
the IFPH but have only one vote) during the Budapest meeting will help the
federation to support the organization of such a roundtable together with the
British Committee and, in general, the presence of PH in Jinan.[20]

Communication is a
very important issue when dealing with international organizations such as the
IFPH. Jean-Pierre Morin (IFPH Vice-Chair), isresponsible for the Federation’s communication policy. The IFPH-FIHP web site has been created by Morin, before the meeting in
Milwaukee at www.publichistoryint.org. The contact e-mail is info@publichistoryint.org. This website will promote a better
communication with the membersand a corporate informative platform for a
worldwide public interested to IFPH activities. A Website committee will have
to be selected to maintain it. A the moment all members of the SC have been
authorized to access and update the web site. The website contains information about the IFPH as such and will become a
platform to say also about IFPH sub-committees, IFPH by-laws, give a
calendar of PH activities worldwide, a bibliography on international Public
History issues and the minutes of IFPH meetings and conferences. A Twitter @IFPH account has also been created and the use of the hashtag #IFPH is recommended. The
Federation asks to use widely the H-Public listserv and the NCPH blog, History@Work to inform about IFPH-FIHP activities. A global IFPH Membership Mailing
List has been created as a courtesy of the Indiana University – Purdue
University in Indianapolis (IUPUI)[21] through the NCPH Executive Director John Dichtl [https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/info/ifph-l]. Important information about
the IFPH-FIHP is also reported within the NCPH web site itself. A Facebook page will also be created.

Committees

Those
present during the SC in Milwaukee discussed the permanence of the existing
committees of the IFPH. The Nominating
Committee and the Program Committee’s
functions have come to an end. But a series of ad
hoc working group should be nominated when needed. For instance, in Luxembourg it has been noted that only two continents were
represented within the SC. So an international outreach committee will be
defined to foster the participation of non-represented continents in the IFPH
SC. SuchanIFPH sub-Committeewill
bemade up of volunteers to link with the Steering
Committee and develop the presence of the IFPH in other continents. IFPH
members are welcome and will have to foster IFPH contacts in Asia, the Pacific,
South and Central America and Africa connecting this committee to the SC
activities.[22]

In Luxembourg, it was proposed also to create a Survey Committee to request to the IFPH membership what they think
the IFPH should do and how to promote PH worldwide. No other
committees were proposed but the web committee.

Goals

Participating to
international conferences and organizing conferences in partnership with other
organizations is a task that the IFPH is today able to perform without having
yet gathered enough money to create a
“treasure” to support international PH activities. At the moment the IFPH-FIHP
has no financial means enabling it to offer grants nor programs, etc., However, the work of its SC members, potential members
and supporters has put up a network able to spread PH worldwide and share the
practices of PH. Putting together interested people and organizations worldwide
around specific goals is what the Federation is primarily trying to do today.
So the IFPH presence in Ottawa in 2013, the Amsterdam conference in 2014 and
the participation in the Chinese CISH
meeting in 2015, are all occasions to promote activities and discussions about
the disciplinary field and its differences worldwide.

A general discussion on Goals and Objectives of
the IFPH ended the public meeting in Milwaukee.Goals and
objectives of IFPH in the coming year will be concentrated to encourage,
promote, and coordinate, at an international level, teaching and research in
public history and to facilitate an international exchange of information between
members. The suggestion made by Andres Etges, at large member of the IFPH SC
and professor at the University of Berlin, to write a standard letter about the
foundation of the IFPH-FIHP and its goals that would have to be sent to all
national historical associations potentially interested in joining the Federation, was unanimously approved.
To promote PH, the IFPH could also develop in the future, some of the following
tools: a worldwide bibliography of Public History, an online international syllabus
as teaching tool, a guide of best practices for education/teaching PH worldwide
derived from the one published
in 2010 by the NCPH, the creation of a committee connecting
internationally public history museums, the support –proposed by Jon Hunner
during the Milwaukee meeting- of living history and time travel activities like
the ones organized by Bridging Ages Association,[23]
etc.. But the first objective should be the building of a list of all academic
PH programs worldwide, updating the list available on the NCPH website divided
between NCPH (US Programs) and IFPH (Worldwide Programs).

Following
these lines and sponsored by the IFPH, Thomas Cauvin a Ph.D. researcher at the
EUI in Florence, member of the 2011 Nominating Committee of the IFPH, proposed
a roundtable comparing several PH European University programs for the
NCPH 2013 annual meeting in Ottawa.

So let’s
all meet during the NCPH
annual meeting in Ontario, Canada, from the 17th
to the 20th of April 2013. We will know more about the next steps of
the internationalization of Public History during the IFPH convention in Ottawa.
We need everybody’s input and collaboration to this young and challenging
federation, the IFPH-FIHP and you may now join the International Federation subscribing directly here.

[1] The
discussants were the following: Justin Champion, Royal Holloway, University of London;
H.A.Akku Chowdhury, Liberation War Museum (Bangladesh); Kate Christen,
Smithsonian National Zoo; Andreas Etges, The John F.Kennedy Institute for North
American Studies; James Gardner, National Museum of American History; Erika
Gee, International Coalition of Sites of Conscience; Michelle Hamilton,
University of Western Ontario; Jon Hunner, New Mexico State University; Serge
Noiret, The Library, European University Institute; Jean-Pierre Morin, Treaty
Relations Directorate, Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada; Linda Norris, Riverhill;
Jon Olsen, University of Massachusetts; Manon Parry, National Library of
Medicine-National Institutes of Health; Sonaren Phy, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
(Phnom Penh, Cambodia); Cecilia Rusnak, Penn State University; Lisa Singleton,
UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre; Ioana Teodorescu, McGill University, Montreal
and Algonquin College, Ottawa; Jonathan Whalley, Independent Public Historian. (See: Annual Meeting Of The American Society ForEnvironmental History And The National Council On Public History, 10-14 March2010 Hilton Portland & Executive Tower, Portland, Oregon, p.15.)

[6] The
papers were later
published as a special issue of the Italian journal Memoria e Ricerca, Serge Noiret
(ed.): “Public History. Pratiche
nazionali e identità globale.”, in Memoria
e Ricerca, n. 37/2, 2011. Only my own paper was written directly in Italian but
online English and French versions of the papers are available here.

[9] The DHLU’s Symposium
2012, “Websites as Sources,” included
five research clusters addressing the question, “How should humanities and
social sciences approach, use, and diffuse publicly available online sources?”
and was organized together with a THATCamp Luxembourg-Trier between the CVCE (www.cvce.eu) and the Center
for Digital Humanities (Universität Trier). (See: “First Meeting of the IFPHMarch 20-23, 2012, International
Federation for Public History”, in Public
History News, Volume 32, Number 1, December 2011.

[11] Still when writing these notes, to be
listed as new member or to know more about the IFPH the contact is the one of the IFPH, SC Chair, serge.noiret@eui.eu but the official address of the
Federation is: IFPH c/o National Council on Public History (NCPH), 327 Cavanaugh Hall – IUPUI, 425 University Blvd,
Indianapolis, IN 46202.

[13]See Jean-Pierre Morin: “Treating History and Policy: the role of public history in the development of policy for treaties in Canada”, in Memoria
e Ricerca, n.37, 2011, pp.115-128.[14] The IFPH 2014
PH Conference Team is the
following: Serge Noiret, IFPH-FIHP Chair, European University Institute; Paul Knevel,
Co-ordinator of the Master and Manon Parry, professor in the MA in Public
History at the History Department, University of Amsterdam; Julia Noordegraf, Programme Director at the MA in Preservation
and Presentation of the Moving Image, Department of Media Studies, at the University
of Amsterdam; Kees Ribbens, senior researcher at the NIOD, Institute for War,
Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Kees
Zanvliet, Head of Research, Exhibitions and Education, at the Amsterdam
Museum; Johan Schot, Foundation for the History of Technology, Technische
Universiteit Eindhoven; Fienn Daniau researcher and Bruno De Wever, professor at
the Institute for Public History, University of Gent, Belgium and Christine Gundermann, Irmgard Zündorf and
Andreas Etges, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Free
University in Berlin.

[16]The IFPH
Program Committee was formed by Anna Adamek, Canada, Arnita Jones, USA, Manon
Parry, USA and Jannelle Warren Findley, USA. See the “Call for Public
History Proposals, International Committee of Historical Sciences Congress
(CISH) in Jinan, China”, in Public
History News, Volume 32, Number 1, December 2011.

[17]A Larger Reading of
the Human Past (Anna Adamek); Regeneration through
historical projects (Anna Adamek); Teaching Public
History (Arnita Jones); The Power of Place in
Public History: Memory,
Identity, and Meaning(Linda Shopes); Historians in Government: Professional
Opportunities/Political Challenges (Michael Devine)and Capital Cities and
Public History: International Perspectives (Mark Kristmanson).

[20] This information is unknown when writing
these notes in August 2012.

[21] The 28th of June 2012, the IFPH-FIHP
mailing list at Purdue University, Indiana, USA, accounted more than 100
members mainly from Northern America and Europe. Information about the list are
available here.

[22] I also established
preliminary contacts with active members like Utpal Kanti Dhar which did
participated in past years to Anna Adamek’s Task
Force for Internationalization but more volunteer will be needed.

[23] Ebbe
Westergren, responsible for Bridging Age activities at the Kalmar County Museum in
Sweden has been also contacted.